How to write meeting minutes: what to record, with an example

To write meeting minutes, record what the group did, not what each person said: who attended, every decision in its final wording, every action with an owner and a due date, and when the meeting started and ended. Take rough notes during the meeting, write them up the same day or the next in plain past tense, and send them out marked as a draft. The group approves them at its next meeting, and only then are they the official record.

Minutes vs. meeting notes

The two words get used loosely, but they are different documents. Notes are for the people in the room: a working memory of ideas, questions and to-dos, written however suits the note-taker. Minutes are the organization's record. They follow the same shape every time, the group approves them, and they get filed, because months later someone will need to show what was decided and when.

You need minutes whenever a group has the authority to decide something and someone may later ask about it: a board of directors, a committee, a homeowners' association, a PTA, a city council. If your nonprofit files IRS Form 990, Part VI asks whether the board and its committees documented each meeting at the time, and the instructions count it as timely if the record is made by the next meeting or within 60 days, whichever is later. For a weekly team check-in, notes are usually enough, and the meeting notes template covers that case.

What to record in meeting minutes

Formal minutes have a fixed shape. Readers learn where to look, and you are less likely to forget a part when the template asks for it. From top to bottom:

What to leave out

Henry M. Robert's original 1876 manual told the secretary to record "what is 'done' by the assembly, not what is said by the members." The rule has not changed. The current Robert's Rules still describes minutes as a record of what was done, not of what was said, and treats a summary of debate as out of place. In practice, leave out:

• Who said what during debate, unless your rules require it.
• Opinions and adjectives: "a lively discussion," "an excellent presentation."
• Side conversations, jokes and anything said after adjournment.
• Anything discussed in a closed (executive) session. Its minutes are kept separately, as your bylaws direct.

Three kinds of minutes

Organizations differ in how much discussion they keep. Pick one style and stay with it, so the record reads the same from meeting to meeting.

• Action minutes record only decisions, votes and assignments. They are short, quick to approve and hard to argue with. Most boards and committees can use them for routine meetings.
• Discussion minutes, sometimes called summary minutes, add a sentence or two on the options considered or the reasons given, without naming who said what. They earn their length when a decision will be questioned later: a fee increase, a policy change, a choice between two vendors.
• Verbatim minutes record every word. Courts, legislatures and some public hearings need them, and they come from a court reporter or a recording, not from a volunteer with a laptop.

Writing the minutes, step by step

1. Set up the document before the meeting

   Copy the agenda into your minutes template and fill in the heading, the expected attendees and one heading per agenda item. During the meeting you then fill blanks instead of building structure. Check the bylaws for the quorum and how votes are taken, so you know what to listen for.

2. Record attendance and the start time

   Note who is present, who sent apologies and any guests, then the time the chair calls the meeting to order. If someone arrives or leaves before a vote, note it. A quorum that disappears halfway through matters.

3. Write each decision down as it happens

   Capture motions word for word. If the wording is unclear, ask the chair to restate it before the vote, which is far easier than reconstructing it afterwards. Then write the result: adopted or failed, with the count if votes were counted.

4. Read back every action item

   Before the meeting moves on, read the action to its owner: "Tom confirms the dates with Anchor Hall by October 16?" A nod in the room saves an argument next month about who agreed to what.

5. Write up the minutes within a day

   Expand your shorthand while you still remember what it means. Cut anything that is not a decision, an action or a fact the group relied on, put the rest in the past tense, and attach written reports instead of retyping them.

6. Send the draft to the chair, then to everyone

   Ask the chair to check it for accuracy, then circulate it to members marked Draft, with the date it will be approved. Send it to the people who missed the meeting too. They need it most.

7. Approve and file the final version

   At the next meeting the group approves the minutes. Corrections go straight into the text, and that meeting's minutes record that they were "approved as corrected." Remove the Draft label, add the approval date, sign or initial as your organization requires, and file the result wherever its records are kept.

How to word minutes

Minutes are read by people who were not there, sometimes years later, so write for a stranger. These conventions keep them clear and neutral:

• Past tense, third person. "The board approved the budget," not "We're approving the budget."
• Full names in the attendance list and at first mention, with roles where they help: "Luis Ferreira, treasurer, reported…"
• Neutral verbs. People reported, proposed, asked and moved. They did not insist, complain or rightly point out.
• Motions as adopted. Record the final wording, including any amendment, and who made the motion. Robert's Rules leaves out the name of the seconder.
• Results in a fixed form. "Adopted, 5–1." "Failed, 2–4." "Adopted by general consent" when no one objected. Record each member's vote by name only when the vote was taken by roll call.
• Numbers exactly as stated. Amounts, dates and counts are what people come back for, so check them against the reports before you send the draft.

Here is one agenda item as it was jotted down, and as it reads in the minutes:

The minutes drop the opinions, keep the two facts the decision rested on and state the decision exactly. The "I think" in the notes is the warning sign: that motion should have been read back before the vote.

Meeting minutes example

Here are complete action minutes for a small nonprofit board, with a line of context where a decision needed it. Most regular meetings fit on a page like this one.

What makes it work:

• The heading and attendance answer the first questions anyone asks of old minutes: which meeting, who was there, and whether it could make decisions.
• Item 4 gives the two facts behind the vote, then the decision in one sentence. The director who voted no is not named, because the count is enough.
• Item 5 records a discussion that ended without a decision. It earns its line by explaining the request on the November agenda.
• Every action has one owner and one date, and each traces back to an item above it.
• The Draft label and approval date tell readers this is not yet the official record.

To start your own, the meeting minutes template has the same parts with placeholders, as a Word or Markdown file.

Mistakes that make minutes useless

• Writing a transcript. Pages of debate bury the three decisions anyone will look for, and quoting people invites arguments at approval time.
• Vague actions. "The committee will look into insurance" has no owner and no date, so at the next meeting nobody has done it.
• A decision without a result. "The board discussed the fee increase" leaves readers guessing whether it passed.
• The secretary's opinion. "After a productive discussion" and "a strong report" are judgments. Leave them out even when they are true.
• Sending them late. Minutes that arrive three weeks on land after the action items were due, and by then memories of the meeting have drifted.
• Rewriting approved minutes. Once approved, minutes change only by a later vote. The original stays as it was, with a note pointing to the meeting where the correction was made.

Writing minutes in Strokes

Strokes is a desktop editor for macOS and Windows that keeps documents as files on your own machine, which suits a record you are responsible for. Keep a project folder per year, one document per meeting. During the meeting, type shorthand under each agenda heading. Afterwards, open the AI Assistant beside the document and ask it to list every decision and action item in your notes with its owner and date, or select a chatty paragraph and press ⌘K to rewrite it as neutral, past-tense minutes.

Then check the result against your notes. An AI summary can drop a vote count, attach an action to the wrong person or add a detail nobody said (a hallucination), and names and figures are exactly where minutes cannot be wrong. Version history keeps the draft you circulated and the approved version with the corrections marked, and the minutes export to PDF or Word for the board packet.